Imagine if, in 1963, two years after JFK’s famous speech to Congress, the New York Times had run a story, “Space program fails to live up to promise.” That will give you some idea of how bad a recent NYT story on the clean energy economy was, “Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises.”

A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more — 2.2 percent — in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent.

Talk about a bait and switch. The NYT cites the Brookings study, but then pulls out one tiny piece of it to make the exact opposite argument of the study. As Climate Progress wrote, Brookings actually found nationwide:

From 2003 to 2010, the clean economy grew by 8.3% — almost double what the overall economy grew during those years….

“The pace of growth really is torrid in that sector,” says Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metropolitan Program and a co-author of the report. “This confirms the intuition that these exciting industries really are growing as fast as we think they are.”

On top of that, median salaries for cleantech-related jobs are $46,343, or about $7,727 more than the median wages across the broader economy. But you’d never know that from the NYT hit job.

“Through the roof” is how Adam Zak, an executive recruiter, describes the demand for workers with sustainability-related job skills. “We estimate about a 40 percent increase over last year in the search assignments we are asked to conduct for these kinds of individuals,” said Mr. Zak, whose clients include companies like Coca-Cola, Andersen Windows and Del Monte.

To meet this demand will require qualified workers. So a growing number of graduate business programs are offering electives in topics like carbon accounting, corporate social responsibility and lean manufacturing techniques to reduce waste and environmental impact.

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Demand from students is also driving business schools to include more social and environmental topics in their curriculum, and hard economic times has not dampened this demand. “The economic downturn has caused some deep soul searching among this generation,” Ms. Maw said, adding that “they want to incorporate their desires to change the world into their careers now, and many are seeing business school as a way to help them make a career change or deepen their skills.”

"Through the roof." That seems to fit with the Brookings numbers. Seems like governments who support green job growth are thinking the same way a lot of businesses are at the moment.